This week I was getting together a quiz and some discussion questions for Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, and I made an interesting discovery in chapter 10. If you’re not familiar with Number the Stars, it is a beautifully-written and poignant story of a 10-yr. old girl, Annemarie Johansen, living in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Her best friend, Ellen, is a Jew, and Annemarie’s family risk their own lives to save Ellen’s family, the Rosens. The friendship and community fostered between the Rosens and the Johansens point up the main theme of the book: the importance of community, or how humans depend on one another for meaning and survival. On Lowry’s biographical page, she explains that the interdependence of people is the most important theme running throughout all of her literature.
I love this book, as well as several other Lois Lowry books, and the theme of interdependent community fits comfortably within the values of the Christian community. We, of all people, should understand how much we need each other, how much we are to value one another, and how much we owe to our neighbor. Lowry paints this community beautifully for us: the people of Denmark are fiercely loyal to their good king, Christian X, and when the Jews become the target of Germany, the Danes immediately begin a plan to rescue them. This part of the story is based on real events—the real-life rescue of thousands of Danish Jews is a fascinating story.
So Lowry starts out on a good theme, one that we can admire without reservation, but when it comes to the ultimate purpose of the community, or the reason that we depend on one another, Lowry, sadly, makes a bold statement of unbelief. When the disheveled group of Jews, including the Rosens, are huddled together, waiting to get on a boat for Sweden, someone begins to read a Psalm. Some find great comfort in the Psalm: others do not.
O praise the Lord.
How good it is to sing psalms to our God!
How pleasant to praise him!
The Lord is rebuilding Jerusalem;
he gathers in the scattered sons of Israel.
It is he who heals the broken in spirit
and binds up their wounds,
he who numbers the starts one by one…Mama sat down and listened. Gradually, they each began to relax. Annemarie could see the old man across the room, moving his lips as Peter read; he knew the ancient psalm by heart.
At this point in the story, we feel better, too. We know the ancient psalm by heart. And Annemarie, a Lutheran, she should know it, too…right?
Annemarie didn’t. The words were unfamiliar to her, and she tried to listen, tried to understand, tried to forget the war and the Nazis, tried not to cry, tried to be brave. The night breeze moved the dark curtains at the open windows. Outside, she knew, the sky was speckled with stars. How could anyone number them one by one, as the psalm said? There were too many. The sky was too big.
Ellen had said that her mother was frightened of the ocean, that it was too cold and too big.
Perhaps Annemarie is struggling with doubt, as we all do, and as we all would, sitting in a dark room, anticipating a German raid at any moment. It might take a few minutes to talk yourself back into reality when your friend’s life is being threatened. Annemarie ponders these thoughts and makes her conclusion.
The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel.
When reading a piece of literature, I try to ask myself, not, how many objectionable elements can I count, but, “What does this piece say about God?” Every book, every television drama, is a story, and that story tells us something about God and how He relates to His world. God may be symbolic, as in The Chronicles of Narnia, but He is there. Even His absence in a story says something definite about Him. In Number the Stars, God is not mean or hostile, He may even be good and gracious, but He is not all-powerful. Some of the earth’s tragic events are spiraling out of His control. Annemarie cannot find peace in this kind of god; instead, she turns to her family, her friends, her fellow people of Denmark. Though there is great comfort to be found in community, it falls far short of a sovereign God who ordains every step of mankind and makes even the wrath of man to praise Him.
Lowry, while emphasizing the need for community, goes too far and makes it an idol. Community cannot save us. The idea that the unity of mankind is an ultimate end is especially troubling when you consider the context of World War II—the cruelty that frightens Annemarie is carried out by her fellow human beings. Christian have a much greater, surer, hope than finding peace and meaning in each other. Who can separate us from the love of God? The world is not too big or too cruel for God.
Sometimes, ironically, “Christian” literature can actually be less Christian than some secular literature. Reading and discussing stories together is a great way to teach children about God and to teach them how to be discerning when they read. It is not enough to be “well-read.” We must be able to figure out what is being said. We are always to be “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Jesus Christ.”
